


so lonely (all in the name of being holy)

by Waistcoat35



Category: Downton Abbey, Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angel Richard, Angst, Forbidden Love, I know it's kind of obvious and cliche but I did it for the sYMBOLISM, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, demon Thomas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21646324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waistcoat35/pseuds/Waistcoat35
Summary: "You go too fast for me, Richard."
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	so lonely (all in the name of being holy)

**Author's Note:**

> CW: mention of stuff covered in Good Omens concerning the use of holy water potentially for suicide, not sure whether ti tag for slight suicidal ideation on Thomas' part?? He ain't doing good either way.

Ellis is leaning against the car door, watching him as he exits Turton's. Thomas' pockets are considerably lighter now, the money distributed among his accomplices ready for the heist. He would not normally say he is a creature of petty crime, but. Desperate measures, and all that. The angel tips his hat as he gets closer, and though he is supposed to be the tempter of the two he tries his best not to let his gaze rest too long on those limbs so elegantly poised as Ellis leans. His hands are tucked into his pockets, and he thinks that that is a new coat. The hat, however, is the same old hat. It always is. He doesn't know why, and Ellis never says, but nevertheless it is. 

"What're y'doing here?" He tries his best not to mumble, but it doesn't quite work. Something about the other always makes him want to shuffle from foot to foot, to keep his gaze fixed to the ground as if speaking to a superior. And yet, he wants to look up. Wants to look the man in the eyes, even if only to get a little bit of that warmth within them.

"I work in York. Makes me hear things. And word is, you're planning a heist. With Webster and all that lot involved." His gaze is steady and piercing, and Thomas wants to scrape one foot on the ground like a nervous horse. He nods, minutely.

"You'll get yourself killed. Christ, Barrow, you'll get yourself bloody killed. All for some _bloody_ holy water." He shrugs slightly. His left hand is trembling, so he puts it in his pocket. The wound is playing up again, invisible while he's in a corporeal form but there all the same. 

"I won't. I'll- I'll be careful." And Ellis' gaze sharpens further, and he feels like a chicken staring down a goshawk. 

"I wish I could believe you. I really do." And that makes him scowl, makes him want to snarl and spit. 

"So you don't trust me either. Should've fucking known." He makes to step away, to slide back into the shadows and watch as Ellis drives away, but then Ellis steps forward as he steps back. 

"I can trust you not to hurt others. I know that. I've always known that, I think."

"Not always."

"Well, at least for a very long time." 

"What's your bloody point, then, if you trust me after all? I haven't got all night, you know. Lurking to do, an' stuff."

"My point is that it's yourself I can't trust you not to be cruel to, Barrow." He stops, and stares, and this might actually be the most terrified he's ever been, because Ellis has rocked up in his fancy car with his warm smile and bright eyes when he could be terribly punished for even speaking to him, and he's seen right the way through him. 

Barrow shakes, and he shakes, and he shakes. 

And Ellis relents.

"Look - you can call off the robbery. Alright? You can call it off, you don't have to do it. I'd rather you get what you want and have the stuff to hand than get yourself killed anyway just trying to get hold of it." And then he turns , opens the car door. For half a second, he thinks Ellis is about to leave at last, but then.  
But then.

He's giving Thomas a flask, with little stars and crescent moons dancing across the outside in foil. Even though his hands are gloved, the warm weighted brush of somebody else's hand against his almost makes him flinch away. But he holds steady, he holds fast. He takes the flask. 

"Don't you go opening it up, mind. I'll worry about you." He huffs, tries for a smile that he gives up on because he knows if he tries too hard he'll start sobbing. Sometimes he thinks all he's wanted for six thousand years is to collapse into Ellis' arms and weep and weep and weep. 

"You always seem to anyway." See. Sometimes he can tell the truth about things, where it counts, vile as he is. 

Ellis sighs and gives him a good long look. He looks almost as tired as Thomas feels, in that moment. All of their six thousand years, catching up. 

"Because I do. Worry, that is. I think I always have." Thomas shrugs.

"Lot to worry about, I suppose. Running around on all these assignments of yours." He gets a shake of the head in return.

"It's not that I worry about." 

"What is, then?"

There he goes again, asking questions he already knows the answers to in the hope that the answers Ellis gives will be different ones to the ones he's ripped apart and reconstructed in his head for the past six thousand years.

"Not what. Who." The answer is short, clipped, as if Ellis knows he knows. Sometimes it feels as if Ellis knows everything. It's more comforting than he can say, he who is floundering in a vast black void called life with oily wings and an oily smile to ease things along. He opens his mouth, closes it again. 

"Should I....say thanks?" Ellis shakes his head.

"I don't want thanking for something I might regret later." He regrets it now, Thomas can tell. From the set in his jaw, the resignation in his eyes.

"Okay." His voice is small, and he wishes he could have a conversation with this angel without his anxiety over everything leaking through. Somehow after everything he's seen and said and done, Richard being angry with him might be the last thing he cannot bear. 

Apparently, Ellis knows that too, because he gives him a soft smile, still sad, but reassuring more so than the piercing stare. Barrow, however, hates people not being cross with him when they ought to be as much as he hates the being cross with him itself, and so he pokes at the wound.

"Suppose they know. Suppose you get found out. Mightn't you be in terrible trouble?" The smile, amazingly and confusingly, becomes a full-blown one then. 

"Not if we're circumspect. That's all we need. We've got by with it before, haven't we?" And then. 

Then he presses a gloved finger to his lips.

And presses it to Barrow's right afterwards.

He blinks rapidly, mouth slightly agape, as Richard pulls away. Then he smiles, and nods towards his car. "Come on, I'll give you a lift home." And he wants to go. He really really wants to go. 

But he thinks of all the times they've talked. All the times Ellis has helped him. About fingers on lips and fingers crossed behind backs and fingers clutching at the sky as he falls down, down, down. He looks at this man, at this angel, and pictures his hat smouldering on the ground somewhere, pictures his sparkly starry tie curling and burning at the edges, pictures him shrieking and shrieking and shrieking as he falls. Pictures demon eyes wary of light, no longer able to see colour. Ellis would never be able to finish any more of his pictures.

He thinks, and then he decides. He steps back, and it feels like the most cowardly fucking thing he's done since that war Up There. 

"Don't think so. Thanks for the offer, though." Ellis looks confused and slightly worried. 

"Don't want to go home yet? I didn't mean anything by it. I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Anywhere you want to be." 

If I could be where I want to be then you wouldn't have to drive me anywhere, he thinks. I'm already right here.

"You-" and he stops then, as he sometimes does before he says something he'll regret and then says it anyway. It's almost a punishment. Makes him feel worse about what happens next. 

"You go too fast for me, Richard." 

As he walks back to the safety of the curb and watches the car pull away, he thinks that the only good thing he's ever done is saving Richard Ellis from the wreck that is Thomas Barrow.


End file.
